Jane Goodall is 80 today. We stand with her for forests.

Today, Jane Goodall turns 80. Her research and activism have changed the way that the world sees chimpanzees and how the world protects them. Greenpeace’s campaign against destructive palm oil in Cameroon, which is threatening the home of the chimpanzee, has been shaped by Goodall’s legacy.

Chimpanzee hanging in a tree, Mefou, National Park, Cameroon.

As a field biologist and primatologist, Jane was among the first to discover many things about this chimpanzees, including their vocal language, social hierarchy and, perhaps most famously, that they could make and use tools.

But by the 1980s Jane’s beloved great ape became recognized as an endangered species. And she quickly discovered that Gombe National Park in Tanzania, home of the chimpanzees she studied and thus her research laboratory for years, was being threatened by deforestation. She soon took her forest conservation message around the world.

Decades after she first spoke about the need to protect the chimpanzee and combat deforestation, Greenpeace remains dedicated to this fight. We strive to end deforestation by 2020 and protect the chimpanzee and other endangered wildlife along the way.

This American company wants to destroy incredible chimpanzee habitat to plant palm oil. And just as Jane Goodall recognized the interconnectedness of humans and the environment, we know it is not just the chimpanzees at risk. Local communities surrounding the Herakles Farms project are losing the land they have relied on for their livelihood for generations.

Luckily, our efforts to stop the Herakles Farms palm oil project has limited forest destruction to just a few hundred acres so far. But Herakles has been given the green light by the Cameroonian government to destroy almost 50,000 acres of rainforest and chimpanzee habitat. So our efforts to stop it and ensure all future palm oil development in the Congo Basin follows strict environmental and social safeguards, continues.

Adolf Ngbe Ebong, the regent of Babensi 2 Village, visits an oil palm plantation belonging to Herakles Farms.This village borders Talangaye and is located at the heart of an area Herakles Farms are trying to convert into oil palm plantation Adolf, like many of his villagers, relies on farming the forest directly to the rear of his property to provide for his family. Adolf and other villagers have discovered that Herakles Farms have ignored their wishes and bulldozed tracts of forests belonging to the village.

On her 80th birthday Greenpeace would like to thank Jane Goodall for her dedication to making the world a better place.

Thank you for discovering and sharing the beauty of the chimpanzee and forging solutions to deforestation. Greenpeace is right here next to you, advancing the fight against today’s threats to this magnificent animal and working tirelessly to protect the forest it and local communities call home.

4 Comments

“Happy Birthday to Jane Goodall-“a wonderful advocate for the Great Ape’s and Orangutan’s she has been an inspiration with her committed empathy and compassion in helping to save them and their habitat’s, “When all the trees have been cut down -all the animals have been hunted -the air is unsafe to breathe -only -then will -man discover -you can’t eat money -Cree prophesy.